Split skull provides rare slice of dissection history

Want to see a splitting headache? This skull, fortunately sliced in half after death, features a rare vertical cut performed during a dissection at the end of the 1800s.

The specimen was uncovered by Jenna Dittmar from the University of Cambridge in the UK while rummaging through the university’s collection. It was probably used as a teaching aid for medical students at the time. Dittmar has been studying the changes in dissection practices between 1650 and 1900 by observing skeletal remains in storage as well as those recently excavated from burial grounds in hospitals, prisons and workhouses across the country.

Using a scanning electron microscope, she examined cut marks on dissected bones and found that, before the 1700s, students used crude tools. At that time they often sawed off the top of a skull horizontally like a boiled egg, which could damage the brain. But as precise tools emerged in the late 1880s, dissectors started making more delicate cuts, allowing them to better study the organs inside.